Google services on the iPad and tablet computers — Here at Google we're really excited about the promise of tablet computers, which will be great for browsing the web and using apps. We've been working hard to optimize our services for the new format - larger touchscreens, increased portability …

Gizmodo's Essential iPad Apps — The iPad App Store is open! Here are the best of the apps so far—the ones you'll actually want when you finally get your iPad. — You might notice a few things about these apps: A lot of them are iPhone carryovers, and a lot of them cost more than you might be used to in the App Store economy.

Here comes a flood of iPad games — For all the talk about the Apple iPad as a cool e-book reader, I'd like to remind everyone that the most popular of the 150,000 apps in the AppStore are games. I would wager that games are going to be the most popular app on the iPad, which has the big screen to do gaming right.

Meet the iPad's best-selling apps — Apple has already posted its “Top Charts” for a tablet computer that hasn't been released — Nobody knows yet what applications the people who buy iPads will want to load on their new machines — for that we'll have to wait until Saturday, when the device goes on sale.

How Long Will It Take iPad App Prices To Drop? — Take a look at the just-made-public iPad apps in the iTunes store and what stands out are the prices of many of the apps. Scrabble on the iPad? $9.99 versus $2.99 on the iPhone. Tetris? $7.99 instead of $4.99. Hangman? Yes, Hangman!

Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either) — I've spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn't come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it's come from experimentalist amateurs.

Google Acquires Online Video Hosting Platform Episodic — Google has acquired Episodic an online video hosting platform, according to a blog post on the startup's site. Google has confirmed the acquisition. We are told that Episodic's technology will be folded into YouTube …

Facebook Buys Up Divvyshot To Make Facebook Photos Even Better — Facebook just bought up Divvyshot, a Y Combinator-backed startup that launched last March. Divvyshot was in the midst of raising an angel round when Facebook swept in with a better offer. The amount of the acquisition is not being disclosed, but it was likely small.

Apple Appears to Have Acquired Intrinsity [Updated] — In February, we profiled Intrinsity, a company made up of former Exponential Technology employees that was gaining attention for its efforts to speed up ARM CPU designs. Intrinsity had cooperated with Samsung to announce …

Intel holding off new ultra-thin notebook CPUs — Intel has recently decided to hold off the launch of new ultra-thin notebook processors until the third quarter as Acer has halted the production of its ultra-thin notebooks and has turned to work on its new Calpella-based TimelineX ultra-thin notebooks …

iPad Sales to Hit 7 Million in 2010 and Triple by 2012 — The iPad's attractive design, compelling applications and multi-touch capability, key components of Apple Inc.'s past successes, will help to offset the initial omission of Adobe Flash from the device and send demand soaring in 2010 and beyond …

New Moto Droid ads challenge iPhone's “app for that” spots — Verizon late Thursday rolled out a pair of new Motorola Droid ads that take a direct shot at the iPhone (seen below). The 30-second spots show a robot picking apps out of a giant sphere and showing their features much like Apple's own “there's an app for that” ads.

2-D Graphics Slowdown After Motorola Droid 2.1 Update — Tesuji Games is nearing the release of its first “mobile toy” for the Android platform. Since the primary development phone around here is the Motorola Droid, I was excited to see Verizon begin rolling out the upgrade to Android 2.1 this week.